Job Market Embraces Massive Online Courses

Seeking Better-Trained Workers, AT&T, Google and Other Firms Help Design and Even Fund Web-Based College Classes

By

Douglas Belkin and

Caroline Porter

Updated Sept. 26, 2013 10:13 p.m. ET

Big employers such as
AT&T
Inc.
and
Google
Inc.
are helping to design and fund the latest round of low-cost online courses, a development that providers say will open the door for students to earn inexpensive credentials with real value in the job market.

New niche certifications being offered by providers of massive open online courses, or MOOCs, are aimed at satisfying employers' specific needs. Available at a fraction of the cost of a four-year degree, they represent the latest crack in the monopoly traditional universities have in credentialing higher education.

"The common denominator [among the new MOOC certification programs] is that there really is an interest in finding credentials that don't require a student to buy the entire degree," said
Sebastian Thrun,
the Stanford University computer-science professor who co-founded Udacity, a MOOC with 1.6 million enrolled students in 200 countries. "This is really democratizing education at its best."

ENLARGE

A University of Pennsylvania professor and teaching assistant record a massive open online course, or MOOC
Associated Press

MOOCs began gaining wide popularity two years ago when three providers started offering high-quality online courses free to anyone. Millions of people have taken the classes, but most MOOCs don't lead toward degrees or help students land jobs.

That is beginning to change. Last week, Udacity announced the Open Education Alliance, which allows students to earn a free certificate based on a series of online courses developed with input from Google and AT&T, among several other companies.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, along with its MOOC partner edX, is starting a course sequence called the XSeries, and plans to ask for input from a consortium of about 50 companies, including United Parcel Service Inc., Procter & Gamble Co. and Wal-Mart Stores Inc. For up to $700, students will be able to take a test and earn a "verified certificate" in subjects like computer science and supply-chain management.

Meanwhile, companies such as Yahoo Inc. have begun reimbursing employees who take certified courses from Coursera, another MOOC provider.

ENLARGE

Sebastian Thrun, co-founder and CEO of online course provider Udacity, at a conference this month.
Reuters

Companies involved in the Open Education Alliance have committed to build at least one class at a cost of about $250,000. In return, they will receive access to a talent pool guaranteed to have studied the skills the employer wants, said
Scott Smith,
an AT&T vice president in charge of global hiring.

"We demand a certain amount of talent…the more entities that can help supply, the better," said Mr. Smith.

The convergence of industry and online educators comes as students seek cheaper ways to get through college. Tuition at U.S. universities rose at more than three times the inflation rate over the past decade. Student debt recently topped $1 trillion. At the same time, some employers have expressed growing skepticism that graduates of traditional universities are truly ready for a job.

Some community colleges and universities have responded by selling smaller, cheaper packages of classes that lead to certificates instead of two- or four-year degrees. But these alternatives risk undermining the prestige of the schools' more expensive degrees.

MOOCS are speeding up this unbundling by cutting prices further and faster, with high-profile schools like MIT harnessing the trend in hopes that what is lost in tuition can be made up in scale.

Critics worry that if corporations take control of curricula they could skew what is learned to benefit their short-term bottom line at the long-term expense of the student.

ENLARGE

"The danger you have is too many kids getting a very narrowly focused education," said Benjamin Ginsberg, a professor of political science at Johns Hopkins University. "The great virtue of, let's say, a general-engineering degree is when technologies change or the marketplace changes, you will have the intellectual tools to adapt to that."

Skeptics add that MOOCs don't have a proven record. A recent report on the partnership for course credit between San Jose State University and Udacity revealed low pass rates.

At the moment, a typical student enrolled in a MOOC is likely to have graduated from college and is using the course to explore an interest or burnish professional skills, though increasing numbers of undergraduates are signing up.

Bill Bunting, a 44-year-old technology officer at a startup in Virginia, has a master's degree in computer science. He recently took a Coursera course on gamification—using videogame mechanics to solve problems—from the University of Pennsylvania. The course, he said, gave him a credential to prove "I was serious about understanding the topic."

Mr. Thrun said the Open Education Alliance was driven by the pace of change in the technology industry and the inability of established universities to keep up. He sees several other business areas the alliance could move into, including finance.

About 10% of U.S. jobs require training in science, technology, engineering and math fields, but don't require a four-year degree, according to a recent report from the Brookings Institution.

"What we are really establishing are educational pathways for people who want skills that are relevant to contemporary jobs," said Mr. Thrun.

If Google and others don't think a 4yr Computer Science degree is required to be a good software engineer than why do they go after MIT and Stanford grads so hard? Don't be fooled people. Free online classes are no substitute for a rigorous 4 yr degree from a good school. Its like the old parable .. "Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime". Most of the topics being taught by these free online classes will be obsolete within 5yrs. But the things they learn from 4yr program like architecture design and algorithms allow them to come up with new ideas and create new startups.

""The great virtue of, let's say, a general-engineering degree is when technologies change or the marketplace changes, you will have the intellectual tools to adapt to that." Apparently Ginsberg does not believe in continuous learning. The concept of MOCC is awesome. My traditionally earned B.S and MBA have not precluded a great deal of continuous learning activity to adapt to changes in the marketplace.

These courses sound like a great idea. Sometimes people really need something more narrowly focused and practical. Also, it has become increasingly important for people to educate themselves throughout their lifetime and online courses make it convenient and affordable. Plus it's good for the established college system to have some competition.HelenBoomers, Markets & Money

I see the fact that some corporations see the legitimacy of the online courses as a reflection of the education that they are seeing from some schools, some of which are considered by US NEWS as "elite". Thus, I see the fact that schools like MIT are putting their materials online as being an important service. That way students and parents can assess what they are getting for an education at their college.

I have experience using MIT's OpenCourseWare material at an "elite" university and have seen the process by which many of our graduates are not getting the education, they need and deserve.. My experience is with what I call "customer oriented" administrators who seem more interested in the "customers" (read students) having a good experience than in them learning. I was actually told by the math chair that he wanted a "cookbook" course and that "a lot was at stake".

(A student who took the "normal cookbook" course, said he couldn't do many of the MIT homework problems even though he made an A in the "cookbook" course and an A in the next course. So much for "cookbook" learning. My class laughed when I read his statement to them. They were regularly doing these problems.)

For anyone interested, I have written a carefully documented article describing my experiences with administrators whose goals seem to be in direct conflict with education. It is titled "A Tale Out of School – A Case Study in Higher Education" and can be found on my blog www.inside-higher-ed.com I think most people outside of academics will find it shocking and will help readers understand why corporations are looking elsewhere.

A liberal arts education was never intended to be vocational training and for most of history it never was pursued for this purpose. The value of a college degree, for the most part, is the personal enlightenment and enrichment one receives through developing the skills to think critically and independently. While this may lead to success in any given career, it by no means guarantees it.

Most people go to college, however, not because they seek the intangible value of a higher education, but because they have been told that it is the necessary predicate to enter the job market. This mistaken belief has led to the increased demand for higher education and higher education institutions, enabled by government guaranteed financing, have capitalized on this American Dream through unreasonable increases in tuition.

Most of the people who go to college are not interested in the transcendent benefits that a liberal arts education yields, but are more concerned with the bottom line of getting a job. For these people, a four year college degree proves to be a poor investment and a waste of time, especially at the unreasonably high tuition of today. These online technical courses in job preparation appear to be exactly what most people want: training that will lead to a paying job at a low cost.

Academics may scoff at these reasonable alternatives , and to some extent they are right: they will not yield the same intangible benefit of a liberal arts degree. They are wrong, however, in most claims that they are inferior insofar as job preparation. Everyone who has gone to school knows that although the experience was certainly fulfilling, it had a nominal if not nonexistent role in job training.

The intangible benefits of a college degree, however, is a hard sell for academics: most of America's youth are not interested in it. They just want a job. For these reasons, such programs will be criticized.

Personally, I think a college degree is worthwhile if one is actually interested in the subject matter he is studying and when one realizes precisely what he is getting. But is this worth $200,000.00 and a lifetime of debt? Absolutely not.

Certification in real world skills is a distinct competitive advantage in today's job market. Well designed on-line curricula coupled with simulations and labs have been winning the day at Cisco Academy, CBTNuggets, et. al., in IT. Bill Gates hailed the Khan Academy as "the future of education". I would add that the future is now.

going back to the homeless shelter and societies massive underutilization of valuable human resources, can perhaps set up four or five cheap old desktop computers(possibly donated from local businesses who would normally "throw out" a 10 year old desktop) in a "job training" area in the shelter.

Folks who are willing to embark on a program to give themselves a 2nd, or 3rd(or more) chance in life, can start out taking free Khan Academy classes starting from anywhere from simple addition and subtraction to introduction to programming classes and then work their way up to free Udacity, Coursera, edX and Saylor classes, in computers, excel spreadsheets, cryptography, etc. and then coordinate with local businesses willing to hire or promote such folks(many of the folks in homeless shelters have daytime jobs).

Will brainstorm and speak with the homeless shelter to see about setting up an inexpensive "job training" site with a few old desktop pc's.

Been keeping an eye on three moocs, udacity, coursera and edX, over the last year to see whether they will place much needed downward pressure on out of control college costs(couple of kids going to college in the future).

I have also introduced these MOOC programs to folks at a homeless shelter one of whom takes classes using the internet at a public library. You would be absolutely amazed at the number of extremely intelligent folks residing in a homeless shelter. Society has a massive amount of underutilized human resources sitting in homeless shelters. Folks can target a few classes at udacity, couple them with a few targeted classes at coursera and edX(Harvard, MIT), and can come away with computer skills that are in strong demand such as the University of Washington and Stanford cyber security classes through Coursera.

Keeping an eye on the MIT certificate in Supply Chain Management rolling out this FAll 2013, with subsequent classes Spring 2014 and Summer 2014. Working full time and enrolled in a college program full time, but time permitting, I may take the 4 MIT classes through edX needed for a Supply Chain Management certificate.

I hope to see continued targeting of these MOOC classes into specific bundles that lead to Certificates with strong market demand.

This is HUGE, whether you are supporter of 4 year college education or not. Many borderline colleges are going to disappear over the next 10-20 years. There is a danger that online education leading to very narrow job skills will pigeon-hole young people into slots that will be very difficult for them to move up from. On the other hand, it may open jobs to people who would never be able to, nor want to, attend a 4 year college. It may also reinforce the 1% - 99% division in our society....and that isn't good. So, I hope this ends up being more good than bad, because it is inevitable that it will grow and grown.

Going to college from the ages of 18-22, at a total cost that can exceed $200,000, to study a wide range of courses in areas such as art and humanities is a wonderful luxury for those who can afford it.

Most luxuries are fun, and college is no different fundamentally than expensive vacations or meals in fancy restaurants. But the ability to learning job-specific skills at low cost and that may lead to immediate employment is one of the greatest developments of our era and should be celebrated.

Alternatives are needed. There is now less value and much higher cost in 4 yr and higher degrees as the Obama economy drags on. The time and money involved mean less and less payoff for the investment.

Excellent initiative! My alma mater recently invited me to view several 'premier' lectures over the Internet. Interesting, but NONE of the lectures covered anything that would remotely assist my work (or most any else's) or to acquire another job. MOOC certification programs allow pupils to get what employers want w/o all the useless stuff, as well as sharply lowering costs.

I'm currently enrolled in my fifth MOOC. They are great and I'm looking forward to Georgia Tech's MOOC-based masters program in computer science. My one complaint is that MOOC's rely too much on multiple choice questions. That will probably change as the technology advances.

We are witnessing higher education's "Kodak moment". Remember the monopoly Kodak had in photographic film and how long it has been since you bought a roll of film?

I have one more tuition check to write to the University of Colorado for my oldest son's tuition. When my younger son goes to "college" in 10 years I expect that his tuition will be much cheaper and his education better.

The bottom line for this story is that employers are shifting the cost of job-specific training from themselves to others, because they can. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but that's what it's about. It's not about liberal bias on campus or the cost of college or the debate between a general education and vocational training. Those are all tangential topics.

This statement must have been made by someone in the “education industry”. “Critics worry that if corporations take control of curricula they could skew what is learned to benefit their short-term bottom line at the long-term expense of the student”

Is demeaning to student’s (It assumes that the student is a nerd who will forever be bound to the corporation) and doesn’t give a student credit for learning anything by ones self. It is also ignorant of the importance of profit in a real world business.

Some years ago, I was sent by my corporation to a major Midwest College for a Master’s degree in a course designed by the industry. I didn’t miss any of the “liberal arts” stuff that I got in my Ivy league alma mata. This was expensive for the corporation and required me to move with my family. I also learned enough about management that I knew when to leave and take a better offer.

Most will choose (a) because they have not yet learned the necessity of having a job. Also because "enlightenment" confers personal superiority, and most people need to feel superior.

The go-to-college mistake lies in failing to realize that enlightenment does not come from going to college. It comes from reading good books, and reading them several times over. Too many young people think enlightment can be found on Yahoo! or Saturday Night Live or The Daily Show.

I'm on my 10th MOOC, just signed up for CalTech's Machine Learning on edX which states that it is the same video lectures and assignments as a parallel CalTech course being offered for on campus students. I'm taking MIT professor Eric Lander's Intro to Biology from edX which is a great course taught by one of the best in the field. As well, I am taking MIT's 8.01x, Intro physics and three Coursera courses in data analysis. Last spring I took edX's Intro to Computer Science with MIT professor Eric Grimson and others, an edX/Berkeley Graphics course and a couple of others.

Each one of the edX offerings have been rigorous, well designed, thought provoking courses of study that have sharpened my middle aged mind, increased my skills and brought me hours of enlightenment. The Coursera offerings are good, but edX's platform and commitment to excellence sets the standards in MOOCs, IMHO.

I'm taking the courses also to try and bring the same technology to high school and middle school students. For example, why would any high school have an independent set of lectures and coursework for any Advanced Placement class when there is a high quality MOOC available for (currently) no cost? How can any high school attract the computer science talent that MIT is offering? That is just the start, why can't public schools adopt MOOCs (and SPOCs - small private, online courses) lowering labor costs, standardizing instruction, raising the quality and freeing up resources for individualized education?

The future is here. I predict that within 10 years, our obsolete educational system will be completely disrupted and the replacement will far exceed what we can accomplish today. Considering that today is google's 15th birthday, and having witnessed the disruption, opportunities and economic progress that the last 15 years have brought, I don't believe the 10 year prediction for a complete change in education bold at all.

I could not agree more! The undergraduate degree has been hijacked into a system of entitlements. It was not set out to be a place for someone to learn job skills and pop out making a good income. It was a place where the next generation would go to learn history (so they wouldn't repeat it), be exposed to new thoughts and develop their own beliefs about life. Now it is an indoctrination camp lead by professors (mainly liberal, but some extreme conservative). What a waste of money for today's students.

I fail to see the difference between supply chain management and accounting. Both are general business classes.

I don't see the ROI issue as a tangent. I don't know what collage should be, but I do know what it currently is. Most people attending collage in the US are there hoping to get a better job with their degree. This was a significant part of the occupy wall street movement. Highly educated people who graduated with tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt and no useful skills or job prospects.

Training in supply chain management is not tied to a single company. Classes on corporate accounting are not tied to one company. How is this any more shifting of cost than a standard degree?

Many courses offered on campuses have no application in employment. But most students are there to get a degree for the express purpose of getting a job. When so many students are paying for their education with debt and given the high cost of that education, is it odd that the education should have a return on investment?

There is a difference between "job training" and "education", although, judging by much of today's US populace, the latter has almost gone the way of the dodo bird. Seriously: "student's"?

A master's degree, whether or not designed by an industry, is not about general education. That's the purpose - or used to be the purpose - of an undergraduate education.

It's no surprise that corporations want employees who have been trained (largely at someone else's expense) in their business. That's job training, and it's one path for those who don't care about learning more than just that. Fine. But "back in the day", colleges turned out intelligent students who participated in more than just a narrow field of study, and some employers actually valued that breadth of knowledge.

It's all about replacing the need for classes, for those things that can be read and studied on one's own. On the other hand, science labs and foreign language classes will still be useful on campus, as well as discussion forum groups to discuss the learned material and to tackle "open-ended questions".

Employer visits on campus should become more frequent, since we are talking about vocational training on behalf of those employers. Employer representatives should partake in those forum discussions.

Meanwhile, some subjects, such as music, will remain largely unaffected by the online movement. (Not everyone is on campus to train for a corporate job.)

And as you mention, there should be some "social" setting provided, for college students to mingle, make friends, and meet that special person, all of which are probably easier to do in a campus setting.

There will be a disruption, but there won't be a complete replacement. We're not going to have eighth-grade graduates who are holed up in their parents' homes taking online courses until they go to work for a corporate employer at age 18.

Because the extant 'education system' is a corrupt concentration of establishment power in unions (public school teachers) and liberalism (tenured professors; a union of another kind; academic councils running virtually all colleges into the ground for the sake of an anti-market ideology).

For general business classes such as accounting, of course you are right. When it comes to industry-specific courses, such as supply-chain management, that are not part of a typical college curriculum, then that's different.

The whole "is this class needed for my job?" or "ROI" discussion is really a tangent. Most colleges are not, and IMO should not be, ONLY about vocational training.

I agree, I still buy physical books as well as ebooks; although I don't buy CDs anymore.

There will need to be a campus to educate people in social, behavioral and athletic skills as well as group dynamics. There just won't be the need for lecture halls and/or classrooms with someone up front repeating the same, endless classes in algebra expecting 20+ humans to all be on the same page at the same time learning the same way displaying the same level of motivation.

Right now, most schools spend all their labor on just academic subjects. Imagine how much more productive schools will be by replacing their single largest labor component with technology?

Borders, B. Dalton's and Barnes and Noble didn't change their business models and Amazon ate their lunch. Remember Tower Records? Think iTunes cared whether Tower wanted online distribution of music. What about news industry? The point is, it doesn't matter what the education establishment wants, the genie is out of the bottle, there is no going back.

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